How long did it take for SO to get a full page of 10k users?

Question

How long did it take for SO to get a full page of 10k users?

When I browse around SO I see 79 featured questions, 8.5 pages of > 10k users, and questions that have 400 upvotes!

How long did it take SO to get to this kind of activity? Are there similar hopes for SF and SU?

Obviously they're a LOT younger, but does anyone know if they're growing at the same/similar/faster/slower speed than SO?

I look forward to the day on SF and SU where a question (CW or no) can get 400 votes...

(If there were a CC dump of SF/SU I would most likely run these statistics myself)

Answer 1

See Google Trends for their visitor statistics. That should give you some indication.

http://trends.google.com/

Answer 2

StackOverflow started with quite a big amount of traffic and that was because of the popularity of Joel and Jeff's blogs. Secondly, developer community tends to be very tightly interrelated. Things spread quite quickly and as soon as people know of a good development resource, they tend to spread the word. To top it off, there was reputation which was something to brag about and developer's take pride in showing off their development skill.

I am pretty sure that other two sites are not even close in their growth rate as of SO. It will take more time for SF and SU but the overall idea of these sites is so good that eventually they might catch up.

Answer 3

So grew very reapidly when it started, partly due to knowledge of its existance quickly spreading throughout developers, thanks to Joel and Jeff's blogs, and quite alot of build up through the community before it launched.

On the other hand when SF launched the only people who were really aware of it were programmers who used SO, who were also sysadmins, or had an interest in that area, so it has taken longer for word to spread about SF in the sysadmin community. I'm quite reguarly seeing posts on twitter etc from sysadmins who have just discovered SF, and there ahve been alot of really expereienced sysadmins joining in the last few months, and leaving some great answers, where as I think alot of the great programmers you see on SO, have been there from the very start.

So I think yes SF adn to the same extent SU are growing slower the SO did, but they are becoming fantastic resources and will become more and more popular, with more experienced sysadmins joining over time.